Whats it mean

I had some test done and I was told that my blood work showed that I had Hepatitis C. Then I went to another doctor who ordered another blood workup.
And the test came back

**We were unable to determine a HCV Genotype for this patient. This is usually due to low viral load, but could also be due to the presence of inhibitors or mutations in the viral genome.

**HCV RNA,Quantitative was <50

What does this mean? I am confused.

Do I have it or not?

[IAmTheWalrus]

I imagine the first test indicated positive for the HCV antibody. The second test was to "quantify" (how much virus is present) and "identify" (which genotype of virus) the virus.

Since the HCV RNA, Quant. test came back <50, this means that the number of viral copies was 0, or at least below the limit of detection for the test. that is why it says < 50 and not zero.

This could be very good news. It could mean that you body cleared the virus from itself spontaneously with no treatment drugs needed. In this case, you would always test positive for the Hep C antibodies, but will have no active viral infection from it. I hope this is the case!

Your doctor needs to answer your question in light of what he knows about your specific circumstances. He may want to re-test to make sure or re-test with a more sensitive test. My guess (and it is only that) is that you do not have an active infection that would lead to chronic Hep C.

There may be some information from others here that will shed more light on this.

Good luck!

[clueless61]

Thank you so much. You pretty much said what the doctor told me. I am to go back in 6 months to redo the test.

I have been having a high SED rate on my blood work for the last 6 months so I was almost certain that the test would be different since they have not been able to find anything else wrong.

Once again thank you for your response.